peewit, Lapwing-Linux and annoying kernels

Aug 05 2010 Published by under FOSS, software

I've been working on peewit recently. I've finally got it talking to telepathy-mission-control, logging in, retrieving a contacts list, displaying it in the GUI and updating when contacts leave/change status.
The current code is the master branch, but extra work may go on in the "tmc" branch.

This has distracted me slightly from Lapwing-Linux, but not by much. Updates are still occurring, although the 2009 core is starting to creak a bit. I've decided therefore to limit updates to aaa_base/aax_base to security and major bug fixing only; there is a lot of exciting things coming in the next 6 months or so (gobject-introspection, GVariants, GTK3, GSettings) that would be more suited to a clean base, rather than getting tacked onto or hacked into 2009.

Where does this leave 2009? I am going to get a release out, with a LiveCD and GUI installer. First however I have to get the web2py site working as I'm fed up with TikiWiki being so clunky (yes, I do remember singing it's praises before. Blogged too soon ...).
Writing a custom site will be better in the long run, but is still a long run ;) The current hurdle is porting my bastardised version of pyForum to work on GAE, or writing it from scratch to work without SQL based queries.
Whilst it would be nice to get the bugtracker and package lister working, I'd be happy to settle for the wiki, forum and user apps working to start with.

LiveCD/installer wise, I'm probably not going to use anaconda, it seems to be getting weirder with each release. vanellus will be the installer for the forseeable future, basically copying the SquashFS image to the HDD. Currently it requires code to do the actual installation, the GUI is good to go AFAIR.

Kernels. Damn. 2009 will ship with a 2.6.30 kernel. Mainly because I've been using it constantly since August last year without hiccup; also because the last few kernels (2.6.33, 2.6.34, 2.6.35) have an annoying bug/feature/omission/regression with "snd_hda_intel spurious response" in dmesg. It seems lots of people are having this problem, especially with VIA chipsets.
It doesn't cause no sound or clicks, but under heavy load the sound will skip, and having dmesg full of noise prevents real errors from appearing, like why nouveau doesn't like resume from hibernation, resuming to a garbled screen and then a hard lock up.
I'll take solace in that the mainline distros with kernels > 2.6.30 also have this sound problem, so it's not just me being stupid.

Until next time :)

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Its been a while

May 10 2010 Published by under Life, politics

Its been a while. In more ways than one.

Firstly, its been a while since I posted here. Whilst I've sort of randomly updated my identi.ca account, I've been irregularly working on lapwing-web, RPMification of Lapwing-Linux and various other bits n pieces. I'm hoping to rectify that a bit (not the first and definitely not the last time I'll say that) by using this blog to demonstrate/showcase FOSS I've written. Or I could move everything to http://samwwwblack.lapwing.org. I dunno.
Otherwise, its business as usual; looking for a developer/computer support related job in the Midlands in a job market fixated on the south east whilst working in the Argos stockroom offloading lorries. Great return for 5 years of uni ;)

Secondly, its been a while since we had Liberals in power, and hopefully by the end of today tomorrow we will again. I have to admit to being really disappointed at the outcome of the election, with the LibDems loosing seats even when getting more votes than last time. I spent most of the following day pissed off (5 hour shift at work didn't help) that the LibDems had done as badly as they did, especially after the hype and hope in the run up (teach me to invest emotionally in hype).
However, I kept coming back to how Dib Lemming put it; the Lib Dems won. Not in terms of seats, votes or forming a LibDem government, but in terms demonstrating the fatal flaw in first past the post voting; how can a party get more votes than last time, but lose seats? Is that a fair representation of the people's will? Is giving 9% of the seats to a party with 23% of the vote fair?
Viewed in those terms, the case for voting reform is made readily apparent.
I hope the current Tory/LibDem talks end well, although I don't like the secrecy surrounding them. I can understand the case for keeping the discussions under wraps as both sides could be tearing chunks out of each other whilst publicly proclaiming to be getting along, so as not to worry the people or fuel the anti-coalition sceptics. It just seems, as a FOSS developer (and I use developer in the loosest terms), that this antithesis to public conflict is counter productive. Raging arguments of opposing views happen on a regular basis in the FOSS world, yet those projects around the arguments still exist and release code. It seems that some very good work has come out of these major arguments and disagreements, the GNU Project being the most prominent example.
Open arguments engage more people, allowing them to contribute their view point, their experience and their information. It also allows a greater number of people to fact check "truths" used in an argument, and to provide counter arguments backed with "truths", and so on. This perpetual proposition and rebuttal process tests an idea to destruction, where it either evolves to fix the flaws or dies. Having this argument in public, recorded for the public, adds the sense of ownership to the idea.
In a time where people are disillusioned in politics and the LibDems especially standing for a "new era" of politics, airing everything in public and inviting public input is the best way to push this change.

Thirdly, its been a while since I started to write this post. I tend to take the best part of a day getting things just so. Thus, everythings probably changed when this post appears ;)

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